HR: 10:35h
AN: H32A-01    [Abstracts]
TI: How to be Unique in Hydrology, Just Like Everyone Else
AU: * Berkowitz, B
EM: brian.berkowitz@weizmann.ac.il
AF: Weizmann Institute of Science, Dept. of Environmental Sciences and Energy Research, Rehovot, 76100 Israel
AB: The hydrological sciences present a wide range of unresolved issues that are of both intrinsic research interest and of key societal importance. And yet, as in many fields of scientific research, we see too much "more of the same science"; in many respects, we might conclude that there are "too many people working on too few problems". The key to being "unique", therefore, lies in identifying the truly important and challenging questions, in finding original means to attack these questions, and in following through to provide answers and solutions. My research philosophy is to question the "conventional wisdom", and to integrate such questioning with cross-disciplinary understanding. Following this philosophy, I have focused my research in several directions, two of which are surveyed briefly. (1) Since the early 1950's, dispersive transport in natural porous media has been quantified by the Fickian-based advection-dispersion equation, and variants therof (including most "stochastic hydrology" approaches), notwithstanding clear and repeated evidence that transport is non-Fickian. In a break with tradition, we have adapted a powerful theory for non-Fickian transport, developed originally in the physics literature to describe electron hopping in amorphous silicon. This theory has proven consistently effective in describing chemical transport in geological media. (2) By convention, there has been little interaction between geochemists and hydrologists. As a consequence, hydrologists usually treat effects of geochemical reactions by inclusion of a generic (and often inadequately) simplified retardation coefficient in a transport equation. On the other hand, geochemists usually treat these reactions by consideration of batch experiments and equilibrium theory, neglecting the dynamic nature of flowing systems. We have bridged these approaches by measuring the effects of geochemical reactions in flowing-column experiments. Such experiments have allowed us to gain fundamental understanding of a series of geochemical-hydrological phenomena, including precipitation and dissolution in rock fractures and in porous media.
DE: 1010 Chemical evolution
DE: 1829 Groundwater hydrology
DE: 1831 Groundwater quality
DE: 1832 Groundwater transport
DE: 1869 Stochastic processes
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2005 Joint Assembly